John Dornenburg

viola da gamba & violone

John Dornenburg is a San Francisco Bay Area performer, teacher, and recording artist. He performs on all sizes of viola da gamba and has been featured on more than 30 CD recordings. His most recent two CDs feature virtuoso music for unaccompanied viola da gamba by Schenck, Abel, Sainte-Colombe, Kühnel, Simpson, Hacquart, and Hume, but he has also recorded solo music by more familiar composers such as J.S. Bach, Telemann, Marais, and Handel. John has appeared as soloist at major festivals in the British Isles, Poland, Turkey, Lebanon, Australia, New Zealand, and Holland, and at both the Oregon and Carmel Bach Festivals in the U.S.A. He is director of the Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, co-director of the Archetti Baroque String Ensemble, and co-founder of the Baroque ensemble Music’s Re-creation. In the Bay Area he also performs regularly with Magnificat, and, on occasion, with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Jubilate Orchestra, and many others. He studied with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and with Wieland Kuijken in The Hague, where he was awarded the Soloist’s Diploma. John is Lecturer in viola da gamba at Stanford University, Instructor of violone at UC Berkeley, and Faculty Emeritus in music history at CSU, Sacramento.